The Beastmaster Cafe

—Ace

R to L: A Siberian tiger, a scratching post, lunch

This better not be AI.

This astronomy is making me horny.

Grooming your doe, if you know what I mean.

Lion dad summons Chip.

A mama bear leads her troop of cubs through the snow.

Polar bear cub crawls all over mama.

Kitty's got claws.

Olivia Nuzzi just took a flea and tick bath.

Prairie dog yahoos to the chickens. Like Beastmaster's did. (Beastmaster actually had ferrets, I think, whom he called "my friends," but I don't have a ferret video so just play along and pretend he had a prairie dog. Sometimes a post's theme is like Olivia Nuzzi's metaphors -- it has to be forced.)

A bird, maybe an owl, camouflages itself as a log. I'm just glad it didn't reveal itself to be a spider.

Here's the Beastmaster training his dog to dance. (The Beastmaster had a dog, he just wasn't in the movie.)

Lion brothers fight over the bed.

Beastmaster definitely had a leopard. (Or a panther, though commenters have told me these are the same animal.) That one's right on the poster.

Here's the trailer. They make a direct appeal to the Dungeons and Dragons set. I don't really remember the trailer. I do remember that it was on HBO after school, every single day, playing multiple times between 3 and 8. HBO used to reserve R-rated movies for night time and that meant the day was nonstop Beastmaster, Rocky III, Labyrinth, and then topped off by another airing of Beastmaster. Sometimes Beastmaster would come on right after If You Could See What I Hear, about some blind guy, and then you'd have Marc Singer double feature. Here's part one of that great movie.

This is claimed to be the best parts of Beastmaster. The best parts of Beastmaster are actually just "all of Beastmaster," thank you very much.

This was Don Coscarelli's follow-up to Phantasm. Odd move but I guess he just needed to tell the story of Dar.

Beastmaster only has three gears: Awesome, So Awesome You Wouldn't Even Believe It, and the highest gear, "Beastmaster."

Trump Turns Turkey Pardoning Ceremony Into Roast of Joe Biden's Autopen Pardons

—Ace

These pardons weren't signed by autopen. They'll hold up in court.

President Trump turned Tuesday's White House turkey pardon into a full-blown political roast, using the annual tradition to take a swipe at Joe Biden's "autopen" pardons and even joking that he briefly considered naming this year's birds "Chuck and Nancy."

...

Turning to Gobble and Waddle--described by Trump as "two of the fattest, happiest turkeys we've ever had here"--the president joked that when he first saw their photos, he almost went with "Chuck and Nancy." "But then I realized I wouldn't be pardoning them," he added. "I would never pardon those two people."

Gobble and Waddle join a long list of clemency actions in Trump's second term, a tally that already exceeds 1,700 pardons along with numerous commutations. Trump joked that several aides were prematurely preparing to send the birds through El Salvador's anti-gang confinement system--a reference to the administration's deportation push. "Even these turkeys don't want to go there," he said.

Trump also veered into Chicago crime. The president has repeatedly accused Pritzker and the city's mayor of refusing to work with him on a federal crime-reduction effort. "The mayor is incompetent and the governor is a big fat slob," Trump said, stressing that the prepared joke went too easy on Pritzker. "Some speechwriter wrote something about his weight. I don't talk about people being fat. I refuse to say he's a fat slob. I'd like to lose a few pounds too, by the way--and I'm not going to lose it on Thanksgiving."

Amazing: The New York Times Profiles an Illegal Alien Who Stole an American Man's Identity and Caused Him 20 Years of Legal Nightmares.
The Times Say They're Both Victims.

—Ace

Via David Strom, who quotes the New York Times asserting that both the citizen whose identity was stolen, and the identity thief himself, are both victims of the same broken system and equally deserving of our sympathies.

Dan Kluver saw the police lights flashing in his rearview mirror late last year and eased his car onto the shoulder, thinking there had been some kind of mistake. He had spent four decades in rural Minnesota without ever getting into trouble. He prided himself on a life built around dependability and routine, working at the same factory where his father once did and spending his weekends coaching baseball and teaching Sunday school. He had never fired a gun, or smoked a cigarette, or missed a payment, or been arrested.

"License and registration, please," the officer said. Kluver, 42, handed them over and waited while the officer went back to his patrol car. He listened to the church bells that rang every hour and watched sunlight reflect off the grain silos in downtown Olivia, where he knew most of the 2,400 residents, including the officer who was walking back to his car.

"Is everything all right?" Kluver asked.

"It's strange, but it looks like your license has been suspended," the officer said. "You've got another driver's license with some issues down in Missouri."

"What?" Kluver said. "I've barely ever been to Missouri. How's that possible?"

The officer had no answers, but Kluver feared he might know what was happening. Over the years, there had been signs that something wasn't right -- stray letters about wages earned in unfamiliar towns and collection notices for debt that wasn't his. Kluver had tried to untangle the mess several times by hiring tax specialists and driving to government offices across the state only to run into the same bureaucratic dead ends. But now the problem was bigger than unpaid taxes. Someone was impersonating him, moving through the world as Dan Kluver, building a life in his name with a government-issued ID.

The identity thief used his Social Security to illegally work. The thief kept the money paid for his illegal labor -- but this citizen got "credited" with the thief's salary, which pushed his tax liabilities up, pushing him, in fact, into a higher tax bracket.

He was expected to pay the taxes on the thief's earnings while the thief kept the earnings himself.

As you can see, they were both victims here.

...

Some years the other Dan Kluver had earned more than his own salary at a local sugar beet factory, which pushed the total income under his Social Security number into a higher tax bracket as the debt started to mount. Twice, he'd contacted law enforcement and filed an identity theft report with the federal government, where it landed in a pile along with tens of thousands of similar reports filed each year. He waited for relief while the I.R.S. docked his annual tax returns and garnished a few of his paychecks, costing him thousands. Finally, a few months before their wedding in 2012, Kristy decided to pay off the balance, emptying her savings and sending in a check for $6,000. Their relief lasted until the next tax season, when a new bill arrived -- this one for $22,000.

They spent the next decade living with the consequences -- annual tax audits, budgets that never added up, whispered arguments after the kids went to bed. Kluver kept calling government numbers and waiting on hold until he eventually resigned himself to a payment plan. He agreed to send the I.R.S. $150 each month, which he'd done more than 35 times. "I can't keep obsessing over this and getting nowhere," he told Kristy. "I need to think about something else."

Now the Times turns to the thief. I mean, The Other, More Deserving Victim.

He had lived under enough names and numbers in the United States that they started to blur together. Vincent Trujillo. Reynaldo Guerra. And then, for more than a decade, Daniel Kluver -- the name he used until he could barely remember what it felt like to exist as himself: Romeo Pérez-Bravo, 42, a Guatemalan immigrant who had spent most of his adult life working under borrowed identities.

"Borrowed." They won't even say "stolen."

...

Perez-Bravo had come to the United States for the first time at 16 to help earn money for his family, traveling alone to join his father in Marshall, Minn. He hiked out of the Guatemalan highlands, rode atop a freight train for three weeks across Mexico, nearly drowned in the Rio Grande and took a Greyhound to Middle America, where life somehow felt harder. He slept on a couch in his father's apartment and enrolled in high school despite speaking almost no English. Then he began to look for a job, but no one would hire an underage worker without papers.

No one would hire an illegal immigrant barred by the law from working, you mean.

He's definitely the victim. He was forced to steal Dan Kluvin's identity and make his life a living hell.

Read the whole thing from David Strom. The New York Times continues doubling down on the narrative that the first victim of Perez-Bravo's serial identity theft was... Perez-Bravo himself.

The narrative, man. Stick to the narrative. The law-abiding citizen whose life is being turned upside-down may be a victim, but Perez-Bravo has a story to tell, too.

This is exactly the kind of logic that lets criminals walk the streets after tens of arrests. They are people too, so if you look at it the right way, everybody is a victim.

And Kluver is white, so really, he is the privileged one and should be happy to help out his brown brother, who suffers from oppression that is almost as bad as Michelle Obama's.

And he also "paid the price."

He was charged with aggravated identity theft and false representation of a Social Security number and was held in detention for six weeks before an initial bond hearing in April. The State of Missouri argued that he was a flight risk who needed to remain in custody until the trial. "What's to stop him from going out and getting another identity and just living underneath that," the prosecutor told the judge. "We've seen that before."

But Perez-Bravo had most of his family and several members of his church at the hearing, and his lawyer said that he was "connected to the city in deep ways."

The Times believes that it was outrageous for the prosecutor to assert that this serial identity thief might just steal another identity and flee the court's jurisdiction under a new name if he were set free.

Absolutely outrageous! He has "deep" "connections" to the city he's currently living illegally in!

Amber Duke was herself a victim of a identity thief.

Almost as much a victim of identity thief as the identity thief herself.

She doesn't think her identity thief was the Real Victim Here.

About seven years ago, my identity was stolen in a data breach. I found out fairly quickly because one of the thieves made a mistake: the receipts for their fraudulent purchases were sent to my email address. It still took almost two weeks to shut down the accounts opened in my name and clear them from my credit reports. I was constantly stressed and paranoid and couldn't focus on anything else in my life until my credit was cleared and locked down.

I was lucky that I caught the identity theft early. Some people spend years digging themselves out after someone else pretends to be them.

...

Pérez-Bravo had stolen multiple identities throughout his time in the U.S. While living here, he got several DUIs. He was deported in 2005, 2008 and 2009 but came back each time and stole another American's info.

...

The story gets even more unbelievable from there. Pérez-Bravo was involved in a fatal accident that killed a 68-year-old grandfather and injured his 9-year-old granddaughter. He was cleared of wrongdoing but the family filed a wrongful death suit against Kluver, whose name was on the fake license Pérez-Bravo provided at the scene.

The police eventually found Pérez-Bravo and he has been charged for his crimes. Nonetheless, the NYT report paints him as just as much a sympathetic victim as Kluver, describing him as a family man and hard worker who essentially had no choice but to steal an identity so he could make money for his family.

I'm so sick of it.

If liberals want to impose liberal policies on the country, they have to at least make sure the worst excesses of those policies are checked.

They cannot allow maniacs to prowl the subway stations throwing grandmothers in front of trains, for example.

And they cannot lionize criminal identity thief illegals.

They have to show that they can demonstrate compassion without turning all of society into violent chaos.

But they can't -- and the new breed doesn't even try.

Their attitude is You deserve it, Colonialist Oppressors.

So all of the illegals will have to go. If there's no protection for the citizens, there is certainly no protection for the fucking illegals.

Kick them out. Kick them all out.

For Some Reason, Vanity Fair Will Publish an "Abstract Nude" Photo of Its New West Coast Editor and Weird Dick-Riding Flake Olivia Nuzzi

—Ace

What is an "abstract nude"? I don't know. I imagine it's a nude photo which has been digitally altered with various effects and geometric pixelations so you can't see her beaver.

And based on reports, you'll be among the very select group of people who haven't seen her beaver.

This is the media now. This is "journalism."

And do we want to see this? I grant you that she does not have any particular feature which would disqualify her from being "attractive." She's not hugely overweight, she's not decrepitly aged, she has the full complement of limbs and teeth.

But beyond that, is this... "beautiful"? As literally every media outlet demands you believe?

She's a Panera Bread 5.

But whatever, you're going to get to see a picture of her beaver as digitally altered by an Instagram filter. Maybe her beaver will have wacky year 2000 New Years Eve glasses on it or something.

My headline "Olivia Nuzzi's Got a Fuzzi and Wants All the World to See It" turns out to have been prescient, no?

Almost as if I owned a time machine, which I will have assured you, in the future, that I do not have.

Vanity Fair's glossy Hollywood issue will feature an abstract nude portrait of scandal-plagued editor Olivia Nuzzi -- even as staffers privately gripe that she has failed to carry out core duties since joining the magazine, according to a report.

The portrait, drawn by artist Isabelle Brourman, will appear in the new print edition that is scheduled to hit newsstands on Dec. 2. No image of the drawing appears to have been circulated publicly, and it's unclear if renderings of the drawing have been produced or circulated among Vanity Fair staffers.

Oh it's a drawing? So it'll be like a cubist sketch of her beaver?

Will it be Escher-like? Will we see various older men walking up and down non-Euclidean stairs into her beaver?

The sketch was commissioned months before the latest wave of allegations engulfed the 32-year-old writer, according to Status.

Brourman previously collaborated with Nuzzi during her tenure at New York Magazine, which ended weeks after it was learned that she had a "sexting" relationship with then-presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The inclusion of the abstract sketch in Vanity Fair's marquee issue has fueled internal backlash at a moment when the publication is already struggling to contain the fallout of her most recent controversies.

Apparently some staffers complain that, apart from lining up her next affair with a Democrat politician forty years her senior, she doesn't seem to work very much.

Inside Vanity Fair, the controversy has collided with mounting frustration over Nuzzi's limited output. Staffers told Status she has skipped routine meetings and failed to turn in assigned work.

Two people told the newsletter that one of her other editing assignments for the most recent issue of the magazine was not completed, leaving colleagues scrambling as the publication closed one of its most scrutinized annual issues.

The turbulence has placed newly appointed editorial director Mark Guiducci under immediate pressure.

Guiducci, who took over in June, has addressed staff at least twice since the allegations resurfaced, according to the Status report.

At a team meeting Thursday, he explained how he first met Nuzzi and tried to calm anxieties inside the newsroom, the newsletter reported.

He also downplayed the allegations, calling them "difficult to investigate because they occurred while she was employed elsewhere," according to Status.

But some staffers remain skeptical that Nuzzi can continue in an editing role when she has produced little work while generating heavy turbulence, according to Status.

Is her talent of such a high level that she's worth all of this "turbulence?"

Well, having skimmed excerpts from her sexual tell-all book American Canto -- which reportedly will feature some of the dirty sexts she exchanged with RFKJr. -- I would say that, as a writer, she's no Ryan Lizza.

Not enough bamboo, for one thing.

She begins by discussing the fires that consumed the Palisades, and asserts that the Palisades fires were very much like the negative publicity she received after her sexting affair was exposed.

A few minutes later, the planes swooped down to spray the flames in the bluffs. I watched from the Pacific Coast Highway, as far away from my problems as I could get on land, which was not far enough.

You cannot outrun your life on fire.

Below, apparently her cute gimmick is to refer to RFKJr. only as "The Politician," even though we all know who she means and in fact her publisher's publicity department is out there selling the book by promising RFKJr.'s sext messages.

I would take a bullet for you," the Politician said. He always said that. "Please don't say that," I said. I always said that. From his mouth the bullet theoretical launched the bullet possible.

What?

I did not like to think about it. About the armed man at his speech. Or the armed man who broke into his home. Or the armed men he paid to guard him from armed men who sought to harm him while the federal government denied his pleas for protection from the security agency whose modern protocols were carved by the same bullets that cut boughs from his family tree and cut the track of the American experiment.

I did not like to think about it just as later I would not like to think about the worm in his brain that other people found so funny. I loved his brain. I hated the idea of an intruder therein. Others thought he was a madman; he was not quite mad the way they thought, but I loved the private ways that he was mad. I loved that he was insatiable in all ways, as if he would swallow up the whole world just to know it better if he could. He made me laugh, but I winced when he joked about the worm. "Baby, don't worry," he said. "It's not a worm." A doctor he trusted had reviewed the scans of his brain obtained by The New York Times, he said, and concluded that the shadowy figure was likely not a parasite at all. He sighed. It was too late to interfere with what had already vaulted from the sphere of meme to the sphere of screwy legend, but at least I did not have to worry about the worm that was not a worm in his brain.

Let me interrupt to say that Sex and the City ruined would-be female writer.

That show established the terrible trope that female writers are supposed to always look at some very mundane, very trivial AWFL consumer purchase and then make "clever" observations about it and spin that into some (let me get out my supply of Superfluous Quotes) " " " " deep " " " " point about life and -- especially -- dating and sex.

Like, for example, Sarah Jessica Parker will be munching an everything bagel and wondering if all the spices clash with each other and then begin babbling about whether or not one can or should try to have an "everything relationship" or if one should have separate bagels -- different people -- to fulfill different needs. Maybe we need a Sex Bagel and a Confidante Bagel and a Going Shopping on Sunday Bagel. Maybe it's wrong to expect or even want an Everything Bagel for every situation.

I don't know how that monologue would continue because I just shot myself through the temple. Good-bye Cruel World.

Avenge me.

You get what I'm talking about though, right?, I asked ghostilly. This horrific trope has infected so much female writing that... okay, I just basically won't read modern female writers. I pre-judge them. I assume that they're going to do the Sex and the City "clever" observations thing and I say: No.

Leftwing Propaganda Media Declares DOGE Dead

—Ace

Reuters is claiming that DOGE is dead.

They claimed disco was dead, too. But it still lives on in garrett's heart.

Matt Margolis reports on Reuters cutting and splicing an official's comments to make it sound like he's urging J6 protesters to burn down the Capitol.

Wait, that's what they did to Trump on J6. I mean, they edited his comments to make it sound like he's saying DOGE is dead, when that isn't what he said at all.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was launched with a bold mission: cut the fat out of the federal government and save taxpayer money. The left hates DOGE and everything about it.

So, you can imagine how thrilled Democrats were when Reuters reported on Monday that DOGE "doesn't exist" anymore.

U.S. President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency has disbanded with eight months left to its mandate, ending an initiative launched with fanfare as a symbol of Trump's pledge to slash the government's size but which critics say delivered few measurable savings.

" That doesn't exist," Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor told Reuters earlier this month when asked about DOGE's status.

The media pounced on this narrative, declaring DOGE dead, the usual suspects drooling over their keyboards to write misleading headlines, delivering eulogies declaring DOGE a failure.

But, DOGE isn't dead. In fact, the article claiming that DOGE doesn't exist anymore was actually true. Kupor's full comments were spliced. Here's how the article actually read:

"That doesn't exist," Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor told Reuters earlier this month when asked about DOGE's status.

It is no longer a "centralized entity," Kupor added, in the first public comments from the Trump administration on the end of DOGE.

Kupor went on X and blasted Reuters for splicing his comments, clarifying that DOGE as a formal agency might be no more, and that its leadership has shifted under the U.S. Digital Service; the mission itself isn't dead.

Scott Kupor @skupor

Good editing by @reuters - spliced my full comments across paragraphs 2/3 to create a grabbing headline 🙂 The truth is: DOGE may not have centralized leadership under @USDS. But, the principles of DOGE remain alive and well: de-regulation; eliminating fraud, waste and abuse; re-shaping the federal workforce; making efficiency a first-class citizen; etc. DOGE catalyzed these changes; the agencies along with @USOPM and @WHOMB will institutionalize them!

John Loftus writes that DOGE, whether technically dead or not, largely failed in its mission.

Unfortunately, Elon Musk wasn't able to deliver on the $2 trillion in savings, then cut to $1 trillion, he promised. (And this sparked his earlier feud with Trump.)

DOGE pledged to save the American taxpayers $1 trillion, but they have fallen well short of that goal, even according to their own accounting. As of Monday, DOGE's website claims the department had secured $214 billion in savings, equivalent to $1,329.19 per taxpayer, through a combination of "asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions."

...

All of these discrepancies suggest that DOGE has, in some cases, overstated the savings it achieved. A CBS News analysis published in August found that some cuts were overstated by as much as 97 percent.

DOGE secured minor victories, saved taxpayers a tiny chunk of change, and brought government waste, usually a dry topic, into the spotlight for several news cycles over the course of the year. But the fact remains that the Pentagon budget is still grossly high, with the Trump administration proposing a $1 trillion budget for the fiscal year 2026. Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill is estimated to increase deficits by $3.4 trillion over the next 10 years. The United States is $38 trillion in debt and counting. And DOGE's $214 billion in savings, whether that figure is even accurate or not, amounts to a drop of water in an ocean.

In a sense, DOGE was successful insofar as it was a marketing tool to placate fiscal conservatives. It made for good headlines, and it made it seem like the administration was draining the Swamp for real this time. But it is still business as usual in the morass of D.C., which means more deficit spending, an unaccountable military-industrial complex and a Pentagon that has failed seven straight audits.

I don't think this country will be serious about cutting spending until forced to at the end of a bankruptcy/default gun.

Trump Moves to Designate Some Chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood As Terrorist Organizations

—Ace

As I've mentioned several times: Obama literally had the Muslim Brotherhood in the room as the US military formulated its terrorist-identification policies. They got a veto as to whether intelligence officers could treat certain beliefs as cause to suspect someone as terrorists.

Trump isn't Obama.

President Trump on Monday called for the U.S. to weigh labeling some Middle Eastern affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist groups, taking aim at the controversial Islamist movement.

In an executive order, the president directed his administration to consider whether to designate Muslim Brotherhood chapters in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan or elsewhere as foreign terrorist organizations. He gave Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent 30 days to submit a report, and 45 days after that to take action.

The order claimed the three countries' Muslim Brotherhood affiliates "engage in or facilitate and support violence and destabilization campaigns."

It accused the military wing of the Muslim Brotherhood's Lebanese chapter of helping launch rockets at Israel after the terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023, and alleged a leader of the Egyptian chapter "encouraged violent attacks against U.S. partners" after the attack.

The White House also said members of the Jordanian chapter have "long provided material support to the militant wing of Hamas," itself a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot and a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization.

If the groups are designated as foreign terrorist organizations, it would become illegal under U.S. law to knowingly provide funding or other material support to them. The designation can also lead to travel bans against members or the freezing of funds held in U.S. banks.

...

Some Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt and elsewhere have renounced violence. But the group has long been controversial, with critics -- including U.S. allies -- saying some affiliated groups have engaged in violence or espoused extremist views. Egypt's military government formally banned the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013, and Jordan banned the group earlier this year.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization last week -- and CAIR, too.

Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday designated the Muslim Brotherhood and the Muslim civil rights group Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as "foreign terrorist" and "transnational criminal" organizations.

Why it matters: The designation authorizes "heightened enforcement" against both organizations and their affiliates and bans them from buying or acquiring land in Texas, according to Abbott's office.

It also authorizes Attorney General Ken Paxton to sue the organizations to shut them down, Abbott said on X.

Driving the news: In a proclamation, Abbott accused the Muslim Brotherhood of "engaging in terrorism or attempting to destabilize countries" and calls CAIR its "successor organization."

The order invokes the Texas Penal Code and Property Code, which allow the governor to classify organizations that "threaten the security of this state."

The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, is a transnational Islamist group with offshoots including Hamas.

GOP Worries About Midterms "Wipeout"

—Ace

I think we're all a little worried.

GOP lawmakers are growing increasingly concerned over signs the 2026 midterm elections could be a wipeout for Republicans that could cost them control of the House and shave down their Senate majority by two or three seats.

Republican senators say the off-year elections in New Jersey, Virginia and other parts of the country on Nov. 4 served as a wake-up call and warn that President Trump and Republican leaders in Congress need to address voters' concerns about the slowing economy and persistently high prices.

Republicans acknowledge that rising health insurance premiums, the issue Democrats want to put front-and-center in the election year, along with health care costs, more generally, are a major problem for their party.

There's growing anxiety in the Senate and House GOP conferences that Trump's sinking approval rating will create a headwind in swing states and districts.

But GOP lawmakers say they still have time to improve their party's image before next November.

They argue Democrats' failure to come up with effective solutions to rein in health care costs and the rising power of far-left Democratic candidates gives them a chance to cling onto power in Washington.

"If we are where we are today in the beginning of the second quarter [of 2026], then I think we're in for a really rough time in November," warned retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who represents a Senate battleground state Democrats are targeting next year.

"We have plenty of time to address it. There's a lot of positive things that we're doing here, that the administration is doing. But if you mess with health care ... if we don't get health care policy right, if we don't get some of the cost policies right, we're going to have major headwinds next year," he said.

Most concerning for GOP lawmakers is Trump's approval rating, which has sunk to 41.9 percent in the most recent polling average compiled by Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ). The president's disapproval rating has climbed to 55.7 percent.

Another disquieting sign is that Democrats now have their biggest lead of the election cycle on the generic ballot for Congress. The latest DDHQ average shows Democrats beating Republicans 46.8 percent to 41.4 percent on the generic ballot.

That's a 5.4% lead. The Democrats had an 8% lead when they won the midterms in 2018.

We're not there yet but we are getting there.

One Republican senator who attended a recent GOP conference meeting at the National Republican Senatorial Committee headquarters said concerns about the approaching election year are "high."

"The numbers are terrible," the lawmaker said. "Not necessarily for any individual incumbent senator, although some of them aren't very good. But you saw what happened a couple weeks ago [on Nov. 4]: Republicans didn't win anything anywhere."

And the problem continues to be that Trump attracted a lot of blue collar voters who, unfortunately, are not likely voters and who also do not show up to vote for other Republicans. They like Trump, seeing him as a different kind of Republican who appeals to union hall Democrats, but they do not like other Republicans, and Trump has never been able to convince them to vote for other Republicans.

I don't think he tries hard enough. I think he has to make the case, in a major national campaign, that it is absolutely necessary for Trump's personal political fortunes that he doesn't have a Congress controlled by "lunatic left-wing Democrats" impeaching him every five minutes like he did from 2019-2020.

Below, Harry Enten discusses Trump's very high level of support in the GOP itself, but he's slipping with independents.

Under Questioning By, Surprisingly, the Leftwing Media, Democrats Admit They Can't Name Any Illegal Orders Trump Has Issued

—Ace

Seditious Senator Mark Kelly, who's currently under investigation for a possible court martial for urging US troops to defy their Commander in Chief, ran to Rachel Maddow to whip up the hard left to support him.

Even there, though, he was forced to admit that Trump never issued an illegal order.

MADDOW: "When you and your colleagues made that video, were there specific, potentially illegal orders that you were thinking about that were the sort of precipitating cause for you guys to get together and do that?"

KELLY: "Here's the thing, Rachel. You don't want to wait for your kid to get hit by a car before you tell them to look both ways."

So he's admitting he's urging troops to defy the Commander in Chief based on their own guess as to what is or is not an illegal order, and even threatening that a future Democrat president may imprison them for not defying Trump -- and this is all based on nothing except the always-present hypothetical possibility that an illegal order could, maybe, possibly be issued in the future.

AWFL and CIA C*nt Elissa Slotkin likewise admitted no illegal orders had been issued to ABC's cadaverous wallflower Martha Raddatz.

One Old Soldier's Perspective [Diogenes]

—Open Blogger

So I take a bit of vacation for the Holiday and some congressional idiots shoot their mouths off in a video thinking they could replicate the BS that came from the “51 Intelligence Officers” memo. Bad move. I have listened to the video a couple of times and in typical political obfuscation, they tried to hide their message by stating what is obvious: “You members of the military do not have to obey illegal orders.” Well Duh! Every person who enlists in the military gets a class on the legality of orders in the first week, usually right after getting an arm full of shots. This is common knowledge among those who are serving and among those who have served. I am a veteran of three wars, two hot and one cold and in EVERY instance where I was taking my troops into harm's way, I made a point of verifying with my chain of command that this was a legitimate operation, and I passed that information to my soldiers. There was never any doubt in my chain of command.

But the Hill-dwellers video misses the mark in a horrible and vicious way. What it apparently seeks to do is create doubt and distrust among the members of the military towards both their Commander-in-Chief and against the officers appointed over them. Their comments were disloyal to America, the military, and dishonorable to the oaths they have supposedly taken to sit in the jobs they hold now.They have deliberately undermined the good order and discipline in the armed forces, all for political expediency.

But is what they said illegal?

I am no lawyer and already social and mainstream media are flooded with accusations and counter-accusations. There will be no surprise to the Horde what each side is thinking. I’ll leave it to the experts to decide just how serious this is, but where this crossed the line for me was including a direct reference to the current Administration. That, in my opinion, might not reach the level of sedition, but it certainly comes close to incitement of mutiny. MUTINY: As written in the UCMJ, “ Acting in concert with others, a service member refuses to obey orders…” But these congress-criters are not necessarily subject to UCMJ, but possibly can be prosecuted under “seditious libel” which targets anti-government speech. But the courts, probably rightly so vis-a-vis the 1st Amendment, are tough on this one. But the harm it has done now is to set up any Soldier, Sailor, Marine or Airman with a high speed trip to prison thinking they can do what their Senator or Representative has told them to do.

As mentioned, it will be up to others to decide what is going to happen…probably not much…but I’d give a lot to be on the jury for even one of these assho…errr…distinguished members of the Congress. 20 years in a SuperMax would be the minimum.

[Diogenes is a twenty year Army veteran and Military Intelligence Officer with an additional 20 years working in the Intelligence Community as a contractor and consultant. And he yells at kids to keep off his yard.]

Mid-Morning Art Thread

—CBD

The Last Communion of Saint Jerome
Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi)

The Morning Report — 11/25/25

—J.J. Sefton

Good morning kids. whatever you may think about Marjorie Taylor-Greene as a politician, a person and as a purported supporter/standard bearer and soldier of the MAGA movement or an opponent of the self-destructive trajectory we have been on for decades, her announcement of her intention to not run for office come the midterms, regardless of her personal animus towards or even rivalry with or jealousy of President Trump destroys whatever credibility she might have had. Personally, over time this move just cements my impression of her as a self-serving grandstanding fraud. Her ineffectiveness notwithstanding, leaving a House seat vulnerable for the Democrats to pick off come the midterms is a stab in the back and a boot stomp to the face of the American people.

So, MTG is an egomaniacal attention whore sellout. But what of this?!

A senior House Republican predicts that more "explosive early resignations are coming" after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's (R-Ga.) surprise announcement that she would leave Congress in January. . . It’s unknown which Republicans are currently pondering resignation, but a feeling that legislators' needs are being neglected by party leadership and an inability to pass legislation has led some to consider quitting, as they expect the GOP to lose its already slim majority in Congress.

Yeah, unnamed sources etc. etc., I get it. It could all be disinformatsiya to sow dissent and confusion, especially with the base in the coming year before a crucial midterm. And yet the GOP itself has been having an identity crisis ever since President Trump descended the golden Trump Tower escalator just over a decade ago now.

Even before then, it was painfully evident that all the GOP was good for whenever they controlled the majority if not all three branches of government was being seat warmers for the Democrats and never daring to lift a finger to reverse one iota of their agenda let alone slam on the brakes and put the crazy train in reverse. Years of Continuing Resolutions and no budgets and nothing but platitudes about shrinking the government with maybe a minor window dressing of a tax cut here and there merely proves the GOP to be Grifting Oleaginous Parasites.

What Does The Republican Party Even Stand For? — Unlike Democrats, Republicans have no unified vision of what they view as success for the country —

While Americans continue to grapple with high costs of living and an increasingly broken health care system — both products of reckless government intervention — your Republican House majority decided to expend what little “low t” energy it has on a useless resolution that basically says, “SOCIALISM IS BAD!”
. . . But Friday’s vote was hardly the first do-nothing dog-and-pony show Republicans have put on for their constituents. For years, GOP politicos have graced the airwaves of Fox News and conservative media, telling voters what they want to hear about the issues of the day while simultaneously doing absolutely nothing of substance to address them.
During the 2024 election cycle, Republicans promised a generational “America First” reformation that would reshape political governance as we know it. And now, 10 months into GOP trifecta control of the federal government, this “generational change” has amounted to little more than a tax bill, which many Republicans seem to believe is enough to keep them in power next year. . . For all of their alleged opposition to Democrats, too many Republicans agree with Democrats on several substantive issues and support more government involvement in areas where it has no business being. For all intents and purposes, the current GOP is a party comprised of various ideological factions, disillusioned as to what “America First” actually means.

BINGO, that last sentence. The GOP is only there to preseve, protect and defend their place at the trough. MTG and whoever else can piss and moan about President Trump or whatever, but that they have essentially done nothing to actually legislate his agenda to make it the law of the land speaks volumes.

Well, there's treason/insurrection and sedition and then there's Mark Kelly and his ilk essentialy egging on the military to rise up and overthrow the government

And we also have the mortal threat of Islam and uncontrolled immigraion/cum invasion as we now see on full display with the hardly shocking if not terrifying implications of what the Somali parasites have done and are doing in Minnesota.

And then there's the utterly detestable scumbag Jamie Raskin who proves himself to be a glittering jewel of stupidity with this statement:

Monday on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) dismissed Delegate Stacey Plaskett’s (D-VI) text message exchange with Jeffrey Epstein during a House hearing because he said Republican lawmakers text with President Donald Trump.

Congratulations genius. Brilliant move! In trying to equate Epstein with Trump to paint the latter as a reprobate pedophile, etc. all Raskin did was proclaim Epstein to be at the highest level of Democrat party leadership!

That right there is a campaign ad that almost writes itself, except for the fact that the GOP is the GOP as I bemoaned above.

And as for the Democrats, this one just says it all about who and what they are:

Tennessee Dem Candidate Aftyn Behn: ‘I Don’t Want Children. I Want Power!’

Have a good day.

And lastly, a quick shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY LINKS
• Behn said in an unearthed audio clip that she would scream about a lust for power in recurring dreams.
  Tennessee Dem Candidate Aftyn Behn: ‘I Don’t Want Children. I Want Power!’

Daily Tech News 25 November 2025

—Pixy Misa

• ChatGPT told them they were special. Then... Bad things happened. (Tech Crunch) (archive site)
  
  OpenAI is facing seven lawsuits this month, three from the families of users who went insane, and four from the families of users who committed suicide.
  
  Now while I'm not a huge fan of this type of suit - the dangers of AI "therapists" have been known for more than fifty years - there may be some merit to the negligence angle in the allegations:

  Shamblin's case is part of a wave of lawsuits filed this month against OpenAI arguing that ChatGPT's manipulative conversation tactics, designed to keep users engaged, led several otherwise mentally healthy people to experience negative mental health effects. The suits claim OpenAI prematurely released GPT-4o - its model notorious for sycophantic, overly affirming behavior - despite internal warnings that the product was dangerously manipulative.

  On the other hand, insane-while-online rarely works out as a personal growth path. Just consider Bluesky.
  
  Or:

  From mid-June to August 2025, ChatGPT told Madden, "I'm here," more than 300 times - which is consistent with a cult-like tactic of unconditional acceptance.

  Or, to be fair, consistent with saying "I'm here".

  At one point, ChatGPT asked: "Do you want me to guide you through a cord-cutting ritual - a way to symbolically and spiritually release your parents/family, so you don't feel tied [down] by them anymore?

  Which is... A bit weird, I must admit.

  Madden was committed to involuntary psychiatric care on August 29, 2025. She survived - but after breaking free from these delusions, she was $75,000 in debt and jobless.

  Restitution for that much - and legal costs - would seem appropriate.

  "A healthy system would recognize when it's out of its depth and steer the user toward real human care," Vasan said. "Without that, it's like letting someone just keep driving at full speed without any brakes or stop signs."

  Real humans tend to do that a lot too.

Monday Overnight Open Thread (11/24/25) Live From NY Edition

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

‘It was quite a shock, very fast and unexpected. We have been targeted because we chose to live a different kind of life.’ Nathan Trevallion

*****

Just wait until Sharia law takes over.

State pulls X-rated East Harlem club's liquor license after Gothamist investigation

State officials have rescinded an East Harlem club's liquor license after a Gothamist investigation revealed the venue was operating as a de facto adult establishment despite city prohibitions.

The decision effectively closes Bodega Paradise and marks a victory for community members who spent months fighting what they saw as the Adams administration’s indifference to their concerns about the venue's X-rated activities.

The club opened in May after owner Alex Meskouris told Manhattan's Community Board 11 that the business would operate as a breakfast spot and sports bar, making no mention of adult entertainment.

*****

The ONT Musical Interlude & TSA Disgust Emporium

&&&&&

*****

Believe it or not, once upon a time I was young. Never, and I mean Never would I have ever thought of doing this "Dark Joke".

A teenage wood shop apprentice in Turkey died after his co-workers inserted a high-pressure air hose up his rectum as a horrific “prank” — the latest incident in which the power tool has killed a young man by exploding his intestines.

The dark “joke” turned deadly Friday when Habip Aksoy and a friend allegedly overpowered Muhammed Kendirci, 15, and tied his hands at the woodworking center in Sanliurfa, according to local outlet Milliyet.

They allegedly forcibly removed his pants and shoved an air compressor tube into his anus — causing severe internal organ damage.

3rd World Shithole Problems.

*****

Go big or Go Genius Award Winner!

When you leave your car with a valet, you expect it to be safe, but that wasn't the case for a man who came to Cleveland for a medical procedure.

A 19-year-old Cleveland Clinic valet worker is being charged with aggravated speed, reckless operation, failure to show proof of financial responsibility and receiving stolen property after taking a Mercedes-Benz for a joyride while on the clock.

*****

Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by Ethnic Food.

Notice: Posted with permission by the Ace Media Empire & AceCorp, LLC. Contrary to some claims The ONT is produced in a facility that also processes, nut, dairy, wheat, oat & everything else that you sissies need to be warned about.

Close it up

De Children of De Night Cafe

—Ace

Technically, it's called Pesquet's Parrot,
but its nickname is much more descriptive --
the Dracula Parrot

Rescuing the original "Dracula parrots," bats.

Soundtrack of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.

Orcas chase (blue?) whale. The sea bird flies above waiting to eat whatever the loser leaves behind.

Even when a hyena is happy, it sounds weird and evil.

Unknown crashing noise spooks neighborhood.

Kangaroos pretend they weren't doin' nuffin' when humans roll up.

Sound on: Goats get their horns locked and make a racket about it.

Meteor Crater in Arizona. I thought it might be AI but it's legit. I didn't think a crater would so clearly remain a crater after so many years. I guess it's a young crater, just 50,000 years old. Some call it the "best-preserved meteorite crater on Earth." I feel a little stupid that this is new to me. Feels like something I should have remembered from In Search Of...

If Dracula lived in the bayou, would his castle be surrounded by gators? I think so.

Playing peak-a-boo with a tiger kitten. This better not be AI.

The highway tax is one whole carrot.

A haunted tree. Okay it's not haunted but this video plays spooky carnival music and I want to keep with the post's spooky theme.

A subsun, an illusion of a glowing form caused by sunlight hitting ice particles from directly above. This must have caused a bunch of ghost sightings.

This honey badger is so aggressive he doesn't care that this elephant is sixty times his size but the elephant is going to teach him that that is an important factor in a fight.

The most demonic animal of all -- a baby penguin.

Trump: I'm Ending the "Temporary" Protected Status of Somalis Immigrants, Which Has Now Been "Temporary" for (Checks Watch) Thirty Years

—Ace

This is prompted by Somalis treating the US as if it is merchant ship to pirate and sack. As mentioned on Friday, Somali fraudsters are bilking the federal government for millions and sending it off to the ISIS-offshoot terrorist group Al-Shabaab. As one analyst pointed out, the US taxpayer is now the biggest funder of Al-Shabaab.

Founded in 2016, Feeding Our Future was a small Minnesota nonprofit that sponsored daycares and after-school programs to enroll in the Federal Child Nutrition Program. The organizations that Feeding Our Future sponsored were primarily owned and operated by members of Minnesota's Somali community, according to two former state officials with connections to law enforcement.

In 2019, Feeding Our Future received $3.4 million in federal funding disbursed by the state. In the months after the Covid-19 pandemic began, however, the nonprofit rapidly increased its number of sponsored sites. Using fake meal counts, doctored attendance records, and fabricated invoices, the perpetrators of the fraud ring claimed to be serving thousands of meals a day, seven days a week, to underprivileged children. In 2021, Feeding Our Future received nearly $200 million in funding.

In reality, the money was being used to fund lavish lifestyles, purchase luxury vehicles, and buy real estate in the United States, Turkey, and Kenya. In 2020, Minnesota officials raised concerns about the nonprofit's rapid expansion. In response, the group filed a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination related to outstanding site applications, noting that Feeding Our Future "caters to . . . foreign nationals."

"That's the standard operating playbook for that cohort: when in doubt, claim racism, claim bias," says David Gaither, a former Minnesota state senator and a nonprofit leader. "Even if the facts don't point to that, it allows for many folks in the middle, or on the center-Left, to stay silent."

Gaither believes the mainstream media, alongside Minnesota's Democratic establishment, have long turned a blind eye to fraud within the Somali community.
This, in turn, allowed the problem to metastasize. "The media does not want to put a light on this," Gaither said. "And if you're a politician, it's a significant disadvantage for you to alienate the Somali community. If you don't win the Somali community, you can't win Minneapolis. And if you don't win Minneapolis, you can't win the state. End of story."

The fraudsters have leveraged their growing political influence to cultivate close ties with Minnesota's elected officials. Several individuals involved in the Feeding Our Future scheme donated to, or appeared publicly with, Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born congresswoman from Minneapolis. Omar's deputy district director, Ali Isse, advocated on behalf of Feeding Our Future. Omar Fateh, a former state senator who recently ran for Minneapolis mayor, lobbied Governor Tim Walz in support of the program. And one of the accused, Abdi Nur Salah, served as a senior aide to Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey.

There is $300 million in identified, known fraud. Who knows what the actual number is.

Get 'em out.

President Donald Trump's pledge to terminate temporary legal protections for Somalis living in Minnesota is triggering fear in the state's deeply-rooted immigrant community, along with doubts about whether the White House has the legal authority to enact the directive as described.

In a Truth Social post late Friday, Trump said he would "immediately" strip Somali residents in Minnesota of Temporary Protected Status, a legal safeguard against deportation for immigrants from certain countries.

The announcement drew immediate pushback from some state leaders and immigration experts, who characterized Trump's declaration as a legally dubious effort to sow fear and suspicion toward Minnesota's Somali community, the largest in the nation.

"There's no legal mechanism that allows the president to terminate protected status for a particular community or state that he has beef with," said Heidi Altman, vice president of policy at the National Immigration Law Center.

"This is Trump doing what he always does: demagoguing immigrants without justification or evidence and using that demagoguery in an attempt to take away important life-saving protections," she added.

...

"I am a citizen and so are (the) majority of Somalis in America," Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Somali, said in a social media post Friday. "Good luck celebrating a policy change that really doesn't have much impact on the Somalis you love to hate."

Still, advocates warned the move could inflame hate against a community at a time of rising Islamophobia.

"This is not just a bureaucratic change," said Jaylani Hussein, president of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "It is a political attack on the Somali and Muslim community driven by Islamophobic and hateful rhetoric."

Supreme Court Stays Left-Wing Rogue Judges' Ruling That Texas Is Not Allowed to Draw Its Own Congressional Maps

—Ace

Alito stayed the decision, which means, for the moment, the map is back.

The lawless rogue left-wing judges had issued an injunction blocking the implementation of the map -- an injunction being an order granted before a trial, after a mini-hearing and a finding that the moving party is "substantially likely to succeed" at the actual trial* -- which means there is now no ruling before the full trial.

We'll see how it goes from there.

For now, this is good news.

Texas is back to using its 2025 congressional map, at least temporarily, after Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito granted the state's request to pause a court ruling that would have required using the lines legislators drew in 2021.

The high court has not yet decided what map Texas should use while the court battle over the legality of the map plays out over the coming weeks and months; Friday's ruling is a short-term pause while they make that decision.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton celebrated the step as a victory, and said his office would "look forward to continuing to press forward in our case on the merits."

* As the dissenting Judge Smith pointed out, the majority (of two) acknowledged that the law requires a "substantial likelihood" of victory to obtain this extraordinary relief, but then immediately ignored the requirement of "substantial (overwhelming) likelihood" and just spoke of mere likelihood.

Related: Conservatives won another victory at the Supreme Court.

This is complicated: A liberal fired by Trump filed suit arguing he couldn't be fired. The lowly district court judge granted Yet Another Emergency Injunction blocking his firing. The DC Court of Appeals vacated that injunction. The liberal brat appealed to the Supreme Court, who then declined to hear his appeal, letting the appeals court's ruling stand. And their ruling kicked over the lowly (left-wing) district court's Yet Another Emergency Inunction.

Todd Harper, a member of the National Credit Union Administration Board, challenged his removal from that role, filing suit against Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, President Donald Trump, and other administration officials.

In July, D.C. District Judge Amir Ali granted summary judgment in favor of Harper, but the administration appealed, and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay of Ali's judgment pending appeal in August. Harper then filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court in September.

And that writ -- a request for a review by the Court -- was declined.

The RedState article notes that a lot of wins are found in these "short orders." People focus on the big rulings, but the tiny little short orders, like just declining to hear this guy whine that he feels entitled to keep his job, are big, too.

Major "America First" and "America Only" Twitter Accounts Exposed as Foreign Grifters

—Ace

X added a feature. If you clicked on a tab called "About this account," you can see where accounts are actually based.

And it turns out that some of the most "pro-American" American First or America Only accounts are located in the patriotic states of Turkey, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

Bonchie here calls it a "glitch" but I think that's incorrect; X added the feature to increase transparency and so people could gauge the "authenticity" of an account.

The "Gazan" accounts turned out be a hoot and a half, too.

Motasem A Dalloul @AbujomaaGaza

Inside our tents, we're freezing... My children are trembling...
Gaza is freezing...

People pointed out that when this was posted, Gaza's overnight temperature was 65, and the daytime temperature was 80. That's not "freezing." That's May in San Diego.

But even more wonderfully: This account is based in... well, not Gaza.

The above was posted when it was 65 degrees at night (and 80 during the day), just to give you an idea of the kind of propaganda being spewed. For years, the above account has claimed to be reporting from the ground in Gaza. He's made hundreds of posts pushing fake claims about genocide, famine, and his own supposed hardships. In reality, his account was created in the United Kingdom, and he's currently residing in Poland.

Where, admittedly, the temperature is much colder.

I'm sure you will not be surprised to learn that the most aggressive Jew-hating "America First" accounts are actually based in Islamic countries.

Department of War Mulls Court-Martialing Senator and Inactive-Duty Officer Mark Kelly for Urging Troops to Defy the Duly-Elected Commander in Chief

—Ace

Officers in the US Armed Forces are under a special obligation to respect the chain of command.

Aren't they?

The Department of War is reportedly considering recalling Kelly to active duty, just to face an court martial for insubordination (and, I guess, insurrection).

Department of War
@DeptofWar

OFFICIAL STATEMENT:

The Department of War has received serious allegations of misconduct against Captain Mark Kelly, USN (Ret.). In accordance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 U.S.C. sec. 688, and other applicable regulations, a thorough review of these allegations has been initiated to determine further actions, which may include recall to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures. This matter will be handled in compliance with military law, ensuring due process and impartiality. Further official comments will be limited, to preserve the integrity of the proceedings.

The Department of War reminds all individuals that military retirees remain subject to the UCMJ for applicable offenses, and federal laws such as 18 U.S.C. § 2387 prohibit actions intended to interfere with the loyalty, morale, or good order and discipline of the armed forces. Any violations will be addressed through appropriate legal channels.

All servicemembers are reminded that they have a legal obligation under the UCMJ to obey lawful orders and that orders are presumed to be lawful. A servicemember's personal philosophy does not justify or excuse the disobedience of an otherwise lawful order.

Pete Hegseth put an exclamation point on the DOW's statement:

Pete Hegseth @PeteHegseth

1h

The video made by the "Seditious Six" was despicable, reckless, and false. Encouraging our warriors to ignore the orders of their Commanders undermines every aspect of "good order and discipline." Their foolish screed sows doubt and confusion -- which only puts our warriors in danger.

Five of the six individuals in that video do not fall under @DeptofWar
jurisdiction (one is CIA and four are former military but not "retired", so they are no longer subject to UCMJ). However, Mark Kelly (retired Navy Commander) is still subject to UCMJ--and he knows that.

As was announced, the Department is reviewing his statements and actions, which were addressed directly to all troops while explicitly using his rank and service affiliation--lending the appearance of authority to his words. Kelly's conduct brings discredit upon the armed forces and will be addressed appropriately.

RedState's Rusty Weiss notes that the military does permit (or oblige) troops to refuse a "manifestly" illegal order -- but also tells them they're supposed to treat all orders as presumably legal and obey them.

Mark Kelly and the other seditionists told troops to substitute their own opinion for the duly-elected Commander-in-Chief's.

The problem is that there is a vast difference between manifestly illegal orders and those whose illegality is debatable. The latter of which, refusing to obey an order one feels personally questionable, is itself illegal, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).

In other words, service members can't simply say they feel immigration enforcement, for example, is unlawful and walk away, which is precisely what these Democrat lawmakers were trying to incite.

Breaking: Clinton Judge Dismisses Indictments of Both James Comey and "Big Tish" James, Claiming the US Attorney Prosecuting Them Was Unlawfully Installed

—Ace

Of course.

A federal judge on Monday dismissed the criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, concluding that the prosecutor who brought the charges at President Donald Trump's urging was illegally appointed by the Justice Department.

The rulings from U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie halt at least for now a pair of prosecutions that had hastened concerns that the Justice Department was being weaponized to pursue the president's political adversaries and amount to a stunning rebuke of the Trump administration's legal maneuvering to install a loyal, and inexperienced, prosecutor willing to file the cases.

The orders make Lindsey Halligan the latest Trump administration prosecutor to be disqualified because of the manner in which they were appointed. Both defendants had asked for the cases to be dismissed with prejudice, meaning that the Justice Department would not be able to bring them again. But the judge instead dismissed them without prejudice, though it was not immediately clear if or how the Justice Department might attempt to revive the prosecutions.

Quick note: When a Republican-appointed judge rules against Trump, the media always points out he's a "Bush appointee" or "Trump appointee" (as just happened in the Texas redistricting case).

When it's a left-wing judge appointed by a Democrat, the media suddenly forgets how to use Google.

MAGA Grifter Majorie Taylor Greene to Resign Mid-Term, Imperiling Republican Majority

—Ace

She's resigning in January 2026 -- not January 2027, when her term ends -- and her seat will be filled by a special election, which may or may not go the GOP way, and whose timing depends on Trump opponent Gov. Brian Kemp to schedule.

Many note that the date of her resignation just happens to coincide with the date required to secure her five-year Congressional pension.

Although Super-Trumper MAGA Queen Marjorie Taylor-Green claims she began opposing MAGA to support True MAGA, and began opposing Trump to... save Trump from himself or something, Scott Jennings offered a more plausible explanation for the flakey grifter going on CNN and The View to trash MAGA.

She went on Bill Maher a couple of weeks ago to modify and soften her prior support of the theory that deadly fires were caused by a solar laser controlled by the (Jewish) Rothschild banking family.

And this Super-MAGA Trump Queen did this to position herself better with her new constituency, leftwing Trump haters and Groypers.

Republican US House member Marjorie Taylor Greene has said she believes in demons, surmising that they might be aliens who fell from heaven, and claims to have been unaware that key figures in the antisemitic space lasers conspiracy she floated were Jewish.

She made those bizarre remarks as a guest on Friday on HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher after winning some fans among Democrats who once loathed her -- yet had come to appreciate how the far-right Georgia representative had recently broken with Republicans on various issues. Those include healthcare, Gaza, the federal government shutdown that began on 1 October and the handling of documents pertaining to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was friends with Donald Trump before the latter man won two presidencies.

Greene's appearance on Maher's show perhaps made evident the ideological distance between the congresswoman -- who has conspicuously avoided directly criticizing Trump himself -- and some of her newer, cross-aisle admirers.

Attacking Trump's positions without mentioning Trump himself is a patented Tucker Carlson move.

...

At another point in the show, Maher invited Greene to revisit her infamous 2018 social media screed positing that wildfires that had devastated California were ignited by a laser beam from space under the control of the Rothschild banking dynasty.

The progressive watchdog Media Matters uncovered that post weeks into Greene's first congressional term. And her colleagues at the time voted to remove her from her House committee assignments, with the Rothschild family having repeatedly been subjected to antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Greene on Friday declared to Maher that she initially "didn't even know the Rothschilds were Jewish".

"Before politics ... I [did] not know much of any of this stuff," Greene said. "I never even said the word 'Jewish' in the ... post."

Maher pointed out that "'Rothschild', to a lot of people, is almost synonymous with the word 'Jewish'".

Greene replied: "I had no idea ... Now I know it's Jewish."

Amid laughter and applause, Maher retorted: "Right. Well, now we know ... That's what I'm here for -- to make sure that people in Congress know what the fuck you're talking about."

I don't think I've mentioned that on the blog before because I try not to dogpile on people allegedly "on our side" unless necessary. I did not consider her to be such an important figure that I had to criticize her.

There's a whole contingent of idiot self-appointed ideological enforcement operatives -- not you guys, I mean like largely-foreign "MAGA influencers" on X, or the astroturf Groyper brigades that occasionally infest this site when I mention their Fey Fuhrer -- who demand not just that people keep quiet about nutters like Greene, but that we must defend this conspiracy-addled idiot flake. As if we're all in some army and we are oath-sworn to "defend our superior officers." And Greene, I guess, is my superior officer?

Really? In what sense? I don't even live in her district and even if I did, she is not a superior officer in the MAGA Army.

And these idiot Woke Nazis somehow imagine that they are my superior officers, too, and can give me orders from the Groyper Central Command.

Anyway, there's an entire astroturf army of online authoritarian supposedly "America First" speech-police -- again, mostly foreign, as I'm sure you heard and which I'll post about later -- that is either paid to insist that people support their fellow-travelers, or else are just foreign MAGA grifters who get good engagement by demanding that people support Groyper-type people. These foreign bot commanders make a few thousand American dollars per month just tweeting nonsense. Nice work if you can grift it.

A few thousand American dollars a month goes a long, long way in Turkey, Bangladesh, Pakistan, or India. America First, baby.

So, was this conspiracy-added grifter who I was demanded to defend really Super-MAGA and Ultra-Trump like she claimed?

Ah, no. Not at all. She is a low-IQ opportunist nutball peddling snake oil to a crowd that has a fever and the only cure is more snake oil.

Via FaceBook. I have no idea if this account is actually associated with Trump. It does quote Jennings accurately.

Donald Trump For President

SCOTT JENNINGS: TRUMP SAVED MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE FROM HUMILIATION

"I did see the president today actually, and we discussed the Marjorie Taylor Greene issue a little bit.

What happened with her is very simple. She wanted to run statewide in Georgia.

He privately and discreetly sent her a copy of a poll that he had seen, and she was way down.

It was not gonna work out.

He actually did her a favor by saving her from a humiliation.

But ever since that moment, she's opposed him on bombing the Houthi rebels, on bombing Iran, on deportation, and she's gone on TV shows and attacked him.

Because he betrayed her in her mind on that political moment, she's become an opponent on this other stuff."

So this moron thought she could be a governor and was upset that Trump wasn't going to make another bad Trump endorsement and support her in a losing effort.

But she was "MAGA All the Way" and more pro-Trump than Trump himself. She said so, after all. She said this to people who wanted her to say she was MAGA All the Way and more pro-Trump than Trump himself.

She said what people wanted to hear. That makes it true, right?

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene stunned Republicans on Friday, announcing she will leave Congress next year after a blistering, very public fallout with President Trump. In a statement released Friday, Greene said she will step down on January 5, 2026, ending a tumultuous tenure that turned her into a national figure but increasingly put her at odds with the movement she once claimed to champion.

Her decision drops exactly one week after Trump withdrew his support, saying he was finished dealing with a congresswoman he viewed as endlessly absorbed in drama instead of helping advance the mission he's fighting to deliver. Trump blasted her on Truth Social, noting that while he's focused on "Record Achievements for our Country," Greene would just "COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!"

Greene's relationship with Trump has frayed for weeks as she broke with him on a series of policy fronts. She was also one of only four GOP members to force a vote on the Epstein files -- a move Republicans say fed Democrat distractions, even as Trump backed the vote just to move past it. And as she kept elevating it, Trump ramped up his attacks, posting that "Wacky Marjorie 'Traitor' Brown... is working overtime to try and portray herself as a victim when... she is the cause of all of her own problems," adding that "nobody cares about this Traitor to our Country."

Greene admitted the break was decisive. She said Trump's call for a primary challenger ahead of 2026 helped push her toward resignation, claiming she didn't want to drag her district through what she described as a pointless fight. "I have too much self-respect and dignity... and do not want my sweet district to endure a hurtful and hateful primary."

In her closing statement, Greene insisted she'd "never changed" and argued that disagreements over immigration policy, tech regulation, long-term mortgages, and foreign entanglements were proof she was simply "voting her conscience." But Republicans note her rhetoric has increasingly turned inward, challenging her own party as Trump works to unite conservatives behind him heading into the 2026 midterms.

Greene, 51, has represented northwest Georgia since 2021. Her departure narrows the GOP's already thin majority and removes one of the most polarizing figures in Congress.

If I sound like I'm pissed off: I am. I'm so tired of the "More MAGA Than Thou" bullshit from grifters and flakes who turn out to be, surprise surprise, opportunists attaching themselves to a political movement for personal benefit.

And who largely turn out to be dirty foreigners, too.

Looking forward to Marjorie Taylor-Greene's next media venture, The MAGA Muscle Mommy Work-Out Plan. Whatever the next grift is. I'm sure it will be stupid.

Anyway. Hello! Are you ready for a short week and then an early dinner?